Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Correcting a Misconception

From Anonymous:

I would like to correct one misconception presented in a previous comment: when you shout here, you are not shouting into the wind. You are shouting in front of an audience that now comprises approximately 26,000 visitors. Some of those visitors come from DOE. Some come from the US Senate. Some from the House of Representatives. Some come from the Office of the President of the University of California. Some sit on the 4th floor of the ad building. Some are reporters for the Associated Press, Physics Today, Nature, the Albuquerque Journal, the Oakland Tribune, and, yes, the Los Alamos Monitor.

Caution is advised in interpreting the statistics. There are probably fewer than a 1,000 visitors to this BLOG. I log in several times a day to check for new posts and comments. Most of us appear to just be watching the dynamics of less than 100 rather vocal participants. True, there have been over 26,000 page views in the last month or so by the ~1,000 visitors. I, myself, have visited many more than 26 pages.

Doug,I agree with "caution". I visit this site about 6 times a day and visit about 15 pages each time looking for updates."Caution" is not out of line in his comment. Facts and statistics are like the old adage, garbage in - garbage out. The statistics for this site can be manipulated any way people whish to twist the numbers.

No, anonymous at 7:56pm, "caution" and you are both wrong. Doug has the list of hits. Unless you happen to know someone has engineered a bot to simulate people visiting, you or "caution" can't just make up smaller numbers that fit your preconceived notions. The visits/views numbers come from one of a number of site metering services, and are reliable. Anyone who has a blog knows this.

I for one am suprised the numbers are not higher. Everyone in northern NM and every DOE contractor should at least look here once.

This Blog is the most effective and trustworthy communication tool that we denizens of the Laboratory have. It is well constructed and the debate format allows us to render error innocuous by dialogue and collective wisdom which is the way universities were once designed and expected to operate.

I talk with many folks in the Laboratory and the community and with our mainline NNSA customers. Most (I would estimate ~95%) have read the Blog and identify with its sentiments.

I have a friend who was a POW in Vietnam. The only hope that kept him and others alive was the "tap, tap, tap" on the wall of the adjoining cell. I don't know what a statistical analysis of those taps might reveal and frankly I don't care.

Keep up the tapping. Don't let anyone suggest otherwise and we'll get through this dark and uncertain time. To quit is to allow tyranny to prevail.

The message I want the world to see is that every day, though myriad bad decisions, the Director makes it harder and harder for this Laboratory to conduct its business. Whatever the motivation for these actions -- empire-building, ideology, inability to cope with ambiguity -- they are causing national security work to bog down and stop, independently of the shutdown.

An example of this is the inability to hire contractors without the personal approval of the Director. In most organizations, contractors are a quick source of temporary labor to meet urgent needs. At LANL, it takes six months to get a contractor approved. This renders it effectively impossible to quickly adjust staff levels to current needs.

Another example is the shuffling of the lab "taxes." A year ago, after declaring it impossible to manage an organization with 250 overhead rates (never mind that we have computers to calculate budgets these days), the Director leveled the rates across the Lab, ensuring that the non-weapons programs are now subsidizing the weapons programs with outside money. This is making external funding hard to get at a time when we most need it.

Each day that goes by with a stubborn management in place that refuses to take responsibility for the consequences of its actions is another day that US national security suffers.

Many thanks for the kind words from one of the above posters. I will keep tapping.

One more, and hopefully final comment on www.sitemeter.com, and its hit counter. Yes, it counts unique hits from individual ip addresses. I don't get the report that shows each individual ip address, because

1) you have to pay for it, and2) I don't care about the individual ip addresses. I don't need to know who visits this site in any more detail than domain from which the visitors come.

Now, for those two or three of you who wish to continue to try to discredit this site, either go away, or do a more professional job of it. You are making yourselves look foolish.

Is it possible to just tally the servers ( i.e GAO, Senate, LANL, LLNL, DOE ...). I often log in from home at junch or early morning just to see who from outside LANL might be tuning in. Some people keep warning us to keep our mouths shut becasue 'they' are watching. I would be very interested to see how often the folks from outside LANL really are checking in.

Such a report could probably be purchased. As it is, the free version of sitementer only keeps records on the last 50 domains that have visited the site. If you are _really_ interested, you could sit there and watch all day, catching each visiting domain.

One of the visitors to this site on March 1st was from "eop.gov", aka, the Executive Office of the President, aka, The Whitehouse. Yes, people from outside the Lab are reading this site, so check your words twice before you hit the "publish" button.

The 1000+ hits a day probably correspond to many fewer visitors, some of which are search engine hits that have very little interest in what is being said here. In the same way I estimate the "regulars" on my blog, I would estimate perhaps 200-300 "regulars" who check this blog regularly. It may be less than that, because of visitors like some in this thread who have said they check in 5-6 times a day. Divide 1000 by 6.

As to the subject matter here, you are discussing a problem. You can use scientific method to define the problem and then investigate probable solutions. Hint: the problem may well go beyond Pete Nanos.

Doug,I don't think that the 2-3 are trying to discredit the site. As with most scientists, they are trying to keep things in perspective.Sounds like two issues may be creeping up here. 1) you may be a little too close to this (pride of ownership) or 2) perhaps a bit thin skinned.